Newt: I wasn't talking about Ryan

Newt Gingrich declared Thursday that he wasn’t talking about House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s Medicare proposal when he used the phrase “right-wing social engineering.”

“It was not a reference to Paul Ryan. There was no reference to Paul Ryan in that answer,” Gingrich asserted during an interview with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.

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“All I was trying to say that day was that it is fundamentally wrong for Obama to impose a left-wing America against the will of the American people,” Gingrich protested.

But if the former House Speaker wasn’t attacking the Ryan plan, Limbaugh pressed, “what did you apologize to [Ryan] about?”—a reference to Gingrich’s personal apology to Ryan two days earlier.

Gingrich insisted he did so only to clear up any misunderstanding between him and Ryan.

“It was interpreted in a way that was causing trouble that he doesn’t need or deserve and was causing House Republicans trouble,” Gingrich said. “My answer wasn’t about the budget. I continue to say publicly that I would have voted for the budget.”

Gingrich, however, was asked directly about the Ryan plan for Medicare on Sunday during his interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” to which he responded: “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering…I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.”

When host David Gregory interjected to point again specifically to Ryan’s plan, Gingrich said, “I think that that is too big a jump.”

The former House Speaker also claimed that when Gregory asked him a question about his past support for health care mandates during his fight against the Clinton health care plan in 1993, he did so without providing the “full context of the conversation.”

While Gingrich insisted Thursday that he did not intend to ding Ryan, he also indicated that he is still not totally on board with the Budget Committee chairman’s plan for Medicare.

“I talked to Paul Ryan about this two days ago and look forward to being able to continue to work with him…He concedes that the Medicare part of it is the beginning of a conversation. It’s not a final document, it’s not the last bill,” Gingrich said. “I think he and I are on track.”